Literal flesh and blood?

Paul Yohannan · Dec 29, 2016

There is a pressing need for people to stop referring to the Eucharistic doctrine of Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans and Anglicans as "cannibalism" or "vampirism.". To do so is not only untrue but very deeply offensive and uncharitable.

John Hyperspace · Dec 29, 2016

I would propose we should be understanding the words of Christ spiritually, and not, carnally: Romans 8:6, 1 Corinthians 2:14 (many turned from following Jesus over the remark "eat My flesh and drink My blood" because they understand it carnally/naturally, and so it was foolishness to them because they cannot receive the spiritual discernment of the words). But Jesus said: John 6:63 because He spoke in parables: Matthew 13:35. Christianity is half in carnal understanding, and, half out; but needs to come completely out. Even the very crucifixion is a sign teaching the putting to death of the carnal understanding, that the mind and understanding may be raised to newness of life in the spiritual understanding.

What I can say is that I am personally thankful that the womb of woman is not able to receive an adult man, or else we would be witnessing countless billions of people re-entering their mother's wombs, only to re-emerge smiling "I have been born again!" and then the congregation would sing a hymn. Thank you Lord for creating the wombs of women to deny this ability!

BubbaJack · Dec 29, 2016

[Staff edit]

But why theologically speaking is it important that it's literal blood and flesh? What is the significance of it salvation-wise?

Kiterius · Dec 29, 2016

BubbaJack said:
Speaking of Communion (Lord's Supper, Eucharist); the idea that liturgical faiths have that the bread and wine are literally Jesus's flesh and blood and that partakers are eating his literal flesh and literal blood. I can see it being a memorial that has value as a sacrament simply because Jesus says so, but to insist that it's literal flesh and blood seems like a kind of cannibalism. I don't know how else to put this, but I admit to finding it a bit disturbing.

A key thing to note is that Jesus said of the bread - this is my body, and of the wine - this is my blood. Is, not just represents. Clearly though, bread is bread, and wine is wine. So, I believe the truth is that Jesus body and blood are truly present over, under, around and through the elements.

thecolorsblend · Dec 29, 2016

BubbaJack said:
But why theologically speaking is it important that it's literal blood and flesh? What is the significance of it salvation-wise?

First and foremost, because He says so.

But another way of looking at it is going back to Israel's observance of Passover. Did they slaughter the Passover lamb and forget about it? Or did they eat the lamb?

If Our Lord is the perfect Passover lamb (and He is), what do you suppose we are to do with His flesh and blood?

pdudgeon · Dec 29, 2016

thecolorsblend said:
First and foremost, because He says so.

But another way of looking at it is going back to Israel's observance of Passover. Did they slaughter the Passover lamb and forget about it? Or did they eat the lamb?

If Our Lord is the perfect Passover lamb (and He is), what do you suppose we are to do with His flesh and blood?

BRILLIANT!

Hank77 · Dec 30, 2016

thecolorsblend said:
But another way of looking at it is going back to Israel's observance of Passover. Did they slaughter the Passover lamb and forget about it? Or did they eat the lamb?

They cooked the lamb and ate it.
The blood of the lamb they put over their door post, they did not drink it.

Norbert L · Dec 30, 2016

BubbaJack said:
Speaking of Communion (Lord's Supper, Eucharist); the idea that liturgical faiths have that the bread and wine are literally Jesus's flesh and blood and that partakers are eating his literal flesh and literal blood. I can see it being a memorial that has value as a sacrament simply because Jesus says so, but to insist that it's literal flesh and blood seems like a kind of cannibalism. I don't know how else to put this, but I admit to finding it a bit disturbing.

You're going to need to figure out what Jesus directly said about those comments about His flesh and His blood when He saw that the disciples were having a hard time swallowing them. That is found in John 6:63. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life."

FoundInGrace · Dec 30, 2016

Communion is symbolic only.. to help us remember the Lord and His sacrifice to pay for our sins.. nothing more nothing less.

FireDragon76 · Dec 30, 2016

For me, it goes to what is a "self". I doubt we really fully understand it. I'm talking to you over the internet, in a way, I'm present with you. We talk all the time of people "giving of themselves" and putting themselves into things. Surely Jesus, being the God-man, could accomplish what he says?

When I read modern theological and biblical scholarship, the understanding that Jesus used the hospitality of meals to welcome those deemed "sinners", those people on the margins of society who were judged unworthy, the Lord's Supper becomes all the more sublime. Jesus, the risen Lord, no longer confined by death, time, or space, is truly giving himself freely to us in the form of bread and wine. That is something I want to believe in more than crackers and grape juice. When we gather together for the Lord's Supper we proclaim that Christ is risen in the strongest way possible. As the Christmas poem by John Betjeman ends:

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine

Paul Yohannan · Dec 30, 2016

Basically, there are four Eucharistic doctrines:

The ancient one, which we see in the first century martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, in the Didache, etc., in which the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of our Lord.
Calvinism, in which this change is spiritual.
Zwinglianism, in which the bread and wine are symbolic.
Melancthon took a purely Memorialist view.

zoidar · Dec 30, 2016

BubbaJack said:
Why would he say that? Why would he tell his disciples to consume him like food? I know that Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans and Anglicans believe the Eucharist is a means of grace. I just find it really a strange thing that Jesus would say these things.

It's not like we eat his flesh physically and drink his blood physically. Everyone can see it's not flesh, and it's not blood, yet Jesus flesh and blood is spiritually in the bread and wine. What did Jesus do at the cross? He sacrificed his flesh and his blood. The lords supper is to receive that sacrifice, his sacrificed body through bread and wine.

AmusingMargaret · Dec 30, 2016

BubbaJack said:
Speaking of Communion (Lord's Supper, Eucharist); the idea that liturgical faiths have that the bread and wine are literally Jesus's flesh and blood and that partakers are eating his literal flesh and literal blood. I can see it being a memorial that has value as a sacrament simply because Jesus says so, but to insist that it's literal flesh and blood seems like a kind of cannibalism. I don't know how else to put this, but I admit to finding it a bit disturbing.

I don't take communion ever (and I think I am probably the only one who doesn't at my church) but I feel that when Jesus died on the cross, when the earth shook, rocks split, tombs opened, and when the curtain was rent in two...Jesus, and Jesus only...because my communion with God, and anything else is merely a substitute.

Paul Yohannan · Dec 30, 2016

AmusingMargaret said:
I don't take communion ever (and I think I am probably the only one who doesn't at my church) but I feel that when Jesus died on the cross, when the earth shook, rocks split, tombs opened, and when the curtain was rent in two...Jesus, and Jesus only...because my communion with God, and anything else is merely a substitute.

How do you reconcile that with the command of our Lord to take communion? I can understand on a hypothetical level the adherence of some to the ideas of Zwingli or Melancthon regarding Communion, but to reject it entirely; even the Baptists would say that is an error.

zoidar · Dec 30, 2016

AmusingMargaret said:
I don't take communion ever

I don't think that communion is necessary for salvation, but Jesus says: "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." /Luk 22:19

I see no reason for not taking it, but plenty of reasons for taking it. To me it's a great thing, to do what the apostles did together with Jesus. A blessing really. Almost like moving back in time 2000 years

ViaCrucis · Dec 30, 2016

[Staff edit]

Anamnesis is a whole lot more than simply having a fond memory of something. I'd recommend looking into how the Jews, even today, still understand their celebration of the Passover.

"The command to remember demands more than the passive recollection of historical events. Remembering that God rested on the seventh day requires people similarly to rest on Shabbat. Remembering the experience of slavery obligates us to care for those whom society neglects. Remembering Amalek involves fighting oppression in every generation.

While historical memory plays a role in virtually every Jewish holiday, the holiday of Pesach (Passover)–more than any other–is the holiday of remembrance. Going a step beyond the Torah’s insistence that the Jewish people remember the experience of slavery, the Hagaddah demands that “in each generation, each person is obligated to see himself or herself [lirot et atzmo] as though he or she personally came forth from Egypt.”

For the Hagaddah, it is not enough simply to remember or even to retell the story of the exodus from Egypt. Rather, one must also project oneself into the story in order personally to experience the move from slavery to liberation." - I Was Redeemed From Egypt

To celebrate the Pesach, in Judaism, is not merely to say "My fathers were slaves in Egypt" but "We were slaves in Egypt", to understand that each generation, every individual, shares in the Passover redemption from slavery in Egypt. The command to remember is not merely recollection, but a joining together of past and present.

This is also how Christians have understood the Anamnesis of the Eucharist, "For the remembrance of Me" is not a command to merely recollect the past work of Christ, it is a joining of the past with the present--Christ's sacrifice, once and for all, is our present reality into which we are joined and live. Consider what the Apostle writes in 1 Corinthians 10, "Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?"--for this reason the Apostle says we should not eat food sacrificed to idols, in doing we sit at the table of demons; for to receive the food sacrificed to idols is to participate in the rites, sacrifices, etc to those false gods. As those who receive the Table of the Lord, we are participating in the sacrifice of Christ, His work on the cross, and His redemption.

It is because the Eucharist is an Anamnesis that we say Christ is, indeed, truly present: He who suffered once and for all for sin, overcoming death, and rising from the dead as Victor over sin, death, hell, the devil, and the world and who ascended, sits and reigns at the right hand of the Father is He who, is now, present for us in this meal of His body and blood in and under bread and wine that we might share of Him, of His work, participating and having communion in what He has done and in who He is.

-CryptoLutheran

ViaCrucis · Dec 30, 2016

BubbaJack said:
But why theologically speaking is it important that its literal blood and flesh? What is the significance of it salvation-wise?

Traditional Christian theology would assert that our salvation is the work of God to rescue us, redeem us, etc; and He does this by bringing us into and uniting us with Christ--Christ who died, Christ who is risen, and Christ who is coming again. Thus salvation is not merely some contractual decree, it is about taking a world of sinners, bringing it into the Person and work of Jesus, and in Him it being healed, renewed, and restored--ultimately and fully on the Last Day at His return in glory, at the resurrection of all the dead, and the everlasting life of the future good world "A new heavens and a new earth", what we call the Age to Come.

A mere memorial meal may have a subjective meaning or a sentimentality; but the Eucharist is more than sentimentality, it is a living encounter and participation in the death, resurrection, and life of the Crucified, Risen, and Glorified Christ in Who alone is found our salvation--our salvation which He caused at Calvary by His dying for our sin, our salvation which He caused by His rising from the dead and defeating death, our salvation which is ours now through faith, in the promise and life of God in Christ by the Spirit, and our salvation on the future Day when Christ returns, the dead are raised, and all things are made new.

This isn't mere bread and wine done for the sake of sentimentality, or as a nice pious ritual; it is Jesus Christ Himself, living and incarnate, the Crucified and the Risen, our Lord, our God, with us, present for us, in our amidst, nourishing us with faith, administering grace upon grace that we, indeed and truly, have life in Him. Not out of our own efforts of obedience which fail and for which none of us could stand before God; but by the grace of God alone, in Christ alone, it is His work alone.

-CryptoLutheran

AmusingMargaret · Dec 30, 2016

Paul Yohannan said:
How do you reconcile that with the command of our Lord to take communion? I can understand on a hypothetical level the adherence of some to the ideas of Zwingli or Melancthon regarding Communion, but to reject it entirely; even the Baptists would say that is an error.

I believe on the night of the last supper (the passover/Judas's betrayal), that Jesus didn't institute a literal supper to be observed by us today like so many people believe (and I do not condemn or belittle, or try to change minds) I just believe that is when He incorporated the New Testament church in His blood.

I believe that Jesus is the Bread of God who gives life to the world (John 6:33); He is the Bread of Life (vs 48); the Bread that comes from Heaven of which a man may eat and not die (vs 50) and the Living Bread that came down from Heaven, and those who eat of Him live forever (vs 51).

To me, anything other than Jesus is a substitute.

zoidar · Dec 30, 2016

The Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:23-29)

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.

AmusingMargaret · Dec 30, 2016

zoidar said:
I don't think that communion is necessary for salvation, but Jesus says: "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." /Luk 22:19

I see no reason for not taking it, but plenty of reasons for taking it. To me it's a great thing, to do what the apostles did together with Jesus. A blessing really. Almost like moving back in time 2000 years

Thank you for your response. I definitely believe in the blessings of communion. My own communion is my alone time with God...with the Bible, my journal, talking with Him, discussing things that bother me, praying for others, telling Him all the things I am thankful for (an endless list, He has blessed me immeasurably), and when I listen closely, I sometimes hear the breath of God whispering to me. To me, that is real communion; wine or grape juice and a piece of bread or a cracker is a substitute.

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